


Day 6: Sickness

by KnowledgequeenAbc



Series: Angst Week 2020 [5]
Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Gen, I understand. it's really stressful and scary., Sick Fic, and I am posting this here so I MEAN, and it turned into a 4.5k behemoth of a oneshot, because my family and I all caught it and my brain decided this'd be a great way to Cope™, ergo if you are uncomfortable with anything relating to the current situation, honestly probably shouldn't read this in general but I can't stop you, if you want sickness angst and dread. uh might as well, please don't read this take care of yourself, specifically this very much draws "inspiration" from the current pandemic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25945132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnowledgequeenAbc/pseuds/KnowledgequeenAbc
Summary: I shouldn't have written this
Series: Angst Week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1875817
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Day 6: Sickness

By all accounts, it shouldn’t have happened.

They’d followed all the rules to a harrowing T. Huddled away in the monastery, found ways to pass the time crawling at a breakneck pace inside its walls.

But crime didn’t wait, so occasionally one of them would creep back to the outside world, mask donned tighter than usual, beat up the baddie, and careen into the shower to scrub off a minimum of two layers of skin with soap as soon as the deed was done.

Food didn’t wait, either. They stocked up, but between the eight of them, even ignoring PIXAL, who rarely ate, and Zane, who didn’t require consistent sustenance, the ingredients in the pantry burnt through quickly. And that was putting aside what deadly snackers they were.

Ironically enough, it was probably the grocery runs that did them in. This year was turning out to be like that—any rhyme or reason, any proportionality to be found in life’s newest curveball, fell apart quickly under examination. It was asking too much to make sense of it. There was no sense.

Kai showed up to breakfast ten minutes late, with a glaze to his eyes and a sluggishness to his step. Nya’s raised eyebrow and Zane's inquiries were brushed off with some excuse about sleeping poorly, and that was that. And when Jay and Lloyd had leaned against Kai mid-gaming match, they all thought nothing of the heat emanating from him. After all, of all people, of course Kai would be the walking furnace, right?

Wrong, apparently.

Kai didn’t show up to breakfast the next morning. The others could only wait so long before they shrugged and dug in, but Lloyd saved a plate of finely-seasoned scrambled eggs, sprinkled with dashes of colorful veggies, for Kai. Y’know, because he was nice like that.

The first sign that something was wrong was the door, shut with not a decibel of sound coming from behind it. Lloyd stood uneasily for a second and stared at the grain of the wood before he raised his knuckles up to rap on it.

A response was slow in coming.

“Who is it?”

Lloyd blinked. Huh. Oddly tame response for Kai, especially given the hour of the morning. Although, he sounded awfully groggy for someone who should’ve been awake and alert by now …

In hindsight, he should’ve known right then and there the storm he was in for. Unfortunately, he was optimistic, ever-hopeful Lloyd, and the realization didn’t break itself over his head like it should have.

“It’s, uh, it’s me,” he said, lamely. “Lloyd? I brought some of Zane’s scrambled eggs, because I see you inhale them whenever he makes ‘em—”

“Don’t come inside.”

The directive caught him off guard, and promptly kicked off the alarm bells that should have gone off much sooner. What was wrong, why was Kai being so curt with him? What was with that panicked edge to his voice?

“Why?” he asked aloud, at length.

An uncomfortable silence. He thought he heard a faint burst of noise.

“Can I at least leave the plate here?”

“Yyyeah. Go ahead.”

“... Can I open the door?”

_“No—”_

Lloyd flinched back at the force of Kai’s voice, but his heart dropped at the staccato cutting off Kai’s voice at the end.

It couldn’t be.

Lloyd made up his mind in that moment.

“I’m gonna open the door. Don’t worry,” he said before any protests could be made. “I’ll stay in the doorway. I won’t come in. Okay?”

“Lloyd, no,” Kai growled from the other side. Lloyd didn’t let it faze him.

“Please?” A guilty prick stabbed at his conscience for pulling out the desperate little brother voice, but drastic times, right?

Kai didn’t say anything for a second.

“Don’t take a single step out of that doorway. And do me a favor—cover your face.”

Welp, that was all the permission Lloyd was getting. He did have a crumpled cloth mask in his pocket, so he carefully balanced the plate in one hand and stretched the mask on with the other. Then he twisted the knob open. His heart twisted with it at the sight that met him.

Kai sat upright on his unmade bed with a slightly hunched back, facing away from him. The curtains weren’t drawn.

“Kai, what’s wrong?”

His older brother didn’t need to say anything, really. He just coughed again, the percussive sound rattling in his ears.

When he turned his head sideways to Lloyd, blanket pulled over his face, his single visible eye glinted with fear.

“You hear that? Don’t come any closer.”

Lloyd understood, and it felt like he’d been doused with ice.

“I’ll tell the others. You’ll be okay,” he promised.

You couldn’t promise what you weren’t certain of, and Lloyd knew it. He didn’t see the pained smile Kai hid behind the blanket as he turned to warn the others, but Kai knew it, too.

He set the plate next to the wall as he shut the door.

——————

Panic erupted in the monastery. Then it was followed by a frenetic scramble.

As a first order of business, they had to send the Sensei away. The man they once knew would likely have objected to any implication that he couldn’t handle himself, but dubiously immortal and inhuman or not, he was still an old man, and it was too much of a gamble for him to be here.

Apparently having been raised from the ground up again by the ninja had instilled in him a little respect for their concerns, because he swallowed his pride and went to stay with Misako. She’d ended up stranded near her latest dig, but it was working out now, so the ninja weren’t about to complain.

Next, testing. None of the others could reasonably get close to Kai, so poor Zane, who didn’t have an immune system to attack, helped him (read: carried, mostly) down the precarious steps and into the backseat of a car. Jay took shotgun, and Zane took the two of them to get tested in one round. Cole, Lloyd, and Nya wiped down every last inch of the seats, then went afterwards.

(Jay whined about how bad it hurt for a solid hour. They all sympathized, of course, but they didn’t pay him particular mind until he blew his nose and the tissue came back with strings of blood on it. Yikes.)

Once they’d finished getting the backs of their noses stabbed for science, then came cleaning. Groans went around at this part, but there was no getting around it—if they wanted to avoid the worst scenario, they were going to have to disinfect nearly every inch of the monastery. Tables, chairs, every device they owned, the doorknobs, the edges of the sliding doors, the sofa … by the time it was over, they all ached to their bones and they’d burned through half of the wipes and gloves bought on the last run to the store. Ears and hands and eyes burned from the fumes. They might as well have been raised in hospitals, for the potent scent cocktail of cleaning chemicals hanging onto every air droplet.

For all the wisecracking, and the occasional joke at Kai’s expense, the air was tense. And for good reason—an enemy they couldn’t see or punch into submission had infiltrated their home, despite all their best defenses, and attacked one of their own. Kai would have to do all the work. Who knew how that would turn out.

And there was a low-thrumming panic among the humans left in the monastery about what happened if they were next.

——————

Unfortunately for everyone’s rapidly-fraying nerves, the test results took two days to return.

Kai got sicker. He threw up repeatedly, and his normally stable temperature had spiked to a worrisome high, even for him. Tylenol couldn’t entirely cut through the fever or the body pain he tried (and failed) to tough out, but it was the best they could do for him.

He’d developed a characteristic cough, too, a hacking-up-a-lung kinda sound that always sounded like he was about to puke. As he worsened, it became the monastery’s demented ambience.

Zane was practically glued to the phone on the day results were expected, waiting for it to ring with more anxious energy emanating off of him than anyone could remember seeing. The others busied themselves through the day with cooking, or cleaning, or checking up on Kai from the other side of the door, or, or, or—anything not to think about the question mark hanging over their heads.

Already, one batch of results had returned; Obviously, Kai was positive. As of earlier in the morning, Cole, Lloyd, and Nya were all safe—for now. It was a small comfort, made all the tougher by the need to maintain bubbles of space; no more tight warm hugs, no more comforting pats on the shoulder, no more annoyed elbowing or playful shoves or even training. Jay staved off the butterflies zipping violently in his stomach by being entirely too obnoxious about competitive Pokémon on the sofa.

“Quiver Dance Vivillon? Hah! Eat my Manectric’s Overheat. Not so bold now, are ya? Wait, no, crap—”

Lloyd, from his safe, socially distant spot on the floor, watched him lose battle after battle and pin it on bad luck.

He didn’t bother joking about Jay’s terrible streak. They both knew why he was really losing.

A cheerful trill rang from the other room, making them jump. Jay looked like he was about to be drawn and quartered.

Zane’s face as Jay walked into the room was schooled. The doctor’s voice was a barely-audible mumble, Zane’s responses were little more than “thank you” and “I will note that” and “yes, of course”, and by the time the phone clicked against the receiver he was ready to explode.

“Well?”

His brother’s icy blue eyes glanced over his face guiltily, and his heart almost gave out from the anticipation.

“I’m sorry, Jay. You tested positive.”

Zane might as well have punched him in the gut. The breath would've left his body about the same.

“Hang on,” he stammered at length. “T-That can’t be right. I’m not sick!”

“Externally, no,” Zane agreed seriously. “It is entirely possible you will develop symptoms down the line, or simply remain completely asymptomatic. Either way, we cannot risk allowing you to spread this to the others. Please return to your room and wait as I inform the others.”

Head down, mask up, Jay stalked to his room, avoiding any paths his friends commonly walked. His head spun. This was all some kind of nightmare, right? He’d wake up and realize it was all a stress dream; he didn’t really have the disease that was dropping people like flies out there!

Oh, who was he kidding.

He could hear muffled voices from the hall as Zane told the last bastions of wellness what was wrong with him. The dread roiling in his gut almost blocked it out. He repeated the words in his head, tested positive, tested positive, I tested positive for- but the words refused to process, clinging to his skin without really sinking in. Where he probably should have been panicking, instead he just found quiet apprehension blanketing a numb acceptance. It almost felt like he wasn’t taking catching a potentially-deadly disease hard enough.

Eh, he would have plenty of time to have a crisis about it later.

Not like he had much else left to do now.

——————

The ones that were left settled into a shaky routine. Zane, Lloyd, and Nya alternated cooking shifts, and picked up curbside take-out the days they were too tired to. Cole, resigned to being forbidden from the kitchen, helped them wipe the bathrooms and tables down until everyone’s hands were raw from washing and the sanitizer burned at their peeling skin.

PIXAL and Zane handled checking up on Kai and Jay, but the others definitely hovered, occasionally exchanging hushed words through the door. It was mainly Jay, bored to tears and brutally restless, who got this treatment; thankfully he had yet to present any symptoms, so he had more than enough energy to keep up a conversation when he wasn’t playing games or tinkering with the parts Nya had gracefully brought to his room.

Kai, on the other hand, was still miserable. While the vomiting had calmed down somewhat, his fever was barely quelled. The ninja had made a habit of group video calls on their phones after dinner to check on each other and have conversations without a door between them, and they exchanged pained glances at the tired slur to his words. They weren’t living their days the same way he was, they couldn't know how much pain he was in, but if he wasn’t even pretending to be tough about it …

That boded nicely, didn’t it.

The worst part was the coughing. By far it was the worst part. So severe had it gotten that each cough sounded like he was seconds from puking. The noise followed no matter where in the monastery you were, and hearing it felt like a hammer straight to the ribs every time. It was a miracle if Kai could get through a sentence without dissolving into a coughing fit.

“I gave it to Jay, didn’t I?” he fussed over call one night. His voice was hoarse from the coughing, and even the honey tea Zane brought didn't seem to be doing him any favors. “He was sitting right next to me before I got sick.”

“Yeah, thanks a lot for that,” Jay retorted through a mouth of orange slice. “Now I get to sit in my room all day and stare at a wall until my brains drip out.”

“Oh don’ worry. They already did that.”

“You—”

Cole snickered, never one to pass up a chance to laugh at Jay’s misfortune. Kai let out an amused huff, before he was seized by a bout of sharp hacking. The sound crunched into static against his phone’s mic. Immediately, the mood dropped into anxious buzzing. By the time it passed, Kai was panting for breath.

“Kai? Are you having difficulty breathing?” Zane asked.

“Wha’s it look like,” deadpanned Kai, patience long spent from fighting the disease.

“Be serious,” Nya snapped. “It could mean serious trouble if you are.”

“Heyy, it’s just ‘cuza the coughing.” Kai shifted in bed, shooting his sister a weak attempt at a reassuring grin. “I’m fine, sis.”

“Still,” yawned Lloyd. “It’s kinda late. Maybe you should go to sleep so you can keep resting it off.”

Before he could open his mouth again, Nya and Cole had already chimed in with their agreement. Kai seemed to weigh his options for a second, then bade them goodnight and hung up.

The other ninja hung in uncomfortable silence for a few moments afterwards. Kai’s younger siblings had blatantly mother henned over him, and he hadn’t even protested.

Scary how Kai could stare down an enemy several times larger without flinching, but fell so easily to something so small.

“I’m … gonna go too, I think.” Nya broke the silence, voice low and raspy.

No one commented on the wet sniffle they caught before they hung up. They were all feeling about the same.

——————

Lloyd didn’t come to breakfast the next morning.

Nya started piling steaming pancakes onto plates for her and Cole, waiting for Lloyd to show up. He didn’t, not even by the time Nya had shoveled her stack down her throat.

She and Cole exchanged nervous looks as they ate. Neither of them were the type to panic quickly, but they had enough wits about them to notice the parallel and worry.

Zane was with Kai, making sure he got enough food in him, and PIXAL was out buying more wipes, masks, and sanitizer. Cole offered first to check on him.

“Sit down and finish those pancakes.” Nya brushed him off, bringing her syrupy plate and coffee mug to the sink. “I’ll go look for him. I’m done anyway.” And then she was off.

Stubbornly pushing down the bubbling dread, Nya marched to Lloyd’s room and listened, trying to hone in on the faint sounds of life on the other side, before knocking on the dark wooden door.

She was met with a distinctly startled yelp, and her lips quirked up in weary amusement.

“Morning, Lloyd. Everything alright, green bean?”

No response, so she strained her ears. All she picked up was shuffling, then the sound of footsteps. Nya stepped back a couple seconds before the door opened, a tired-looking Lloyd standing behind it with bedhead she wished she could ruffle and a mask pulled over his face.

“Hey,” Lloyd croaked. “Sorry for not coming to breakfast—”

“That’s fine.” Nya eyed him, mind properly kicking into gear as she analyzed his appearance. Hilarious bedhead, still in his ruffled pajamas, eyes dull and glazed over like he hadn’t slept a lick the night before.

Wearing a mask just to greet her.

“It was just my pancakes anyway, nothing special,” she continued. “Is something up? Maybe …” Nya paused, gulping. “Maybe anything to do with why you’ve got a mask on, in your room?”

Lloyd’s eyes widened.

“... It’s really dumb, but uh. I was snacking on a bag of Reese’s cups last night—” Nya wasn’t even going to begin unpacking that sentence. “—and I. Couldn’t taste them? I thought I was going nuts or something. Hah, nuts, like peanuts, I should share that one with Jay.”

Nya gave up saying anything in lieu of eyeing Lloyd with disbelief. He definitely needed more sleep, for one thing. For another, she wasn’t sure she liked where this was going.

“Anyways. It’s not just me, I really can’t taste them. I ate half the bag trying to figure that out. So I looked it up, and the internet says that’s a common symptom …” Lloyd’s voice had fallen into a nervous falter, and Nya’s heart dropped with it.

“And my throat’s kinda sore. I thought it was from screaming at Jay to encourage bad decisions when he was playing Tales of Grenda, except it hurts worse now.”

“Oh, Lloyd …”

“Plus, my chest feels like someone’s sitting on it. And Googol says both of those things are symptoms, too, so I probably have it and I didn’t wanna give it to any of the rest of you guys. Agh.” Lloyd ran a hand through his hair to smoothen it. “It’s been difficult enough to manage the monastery as it is, and then I was stupid enough to go get myself sick, too. Maybe I even passed it to one of you and it just hasn’t shown up yet. This is only gonna make it harder, isn’t it? I’m really sorry, Nya—”

“Hey, wait just a minute,” she protested, not eager to hear Lloyd take to blaming himself yet again for something that wasn’t his fault. “You couldn’t have known when you were about to catch it. You’re not a burden on us because you got sick, Lloyd. Just like Kai and Jay aren’t.”

Nya caught the lingering distress in Lloyd’s eyes and heaved a sigh she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “Just. Go back to bed and get some rest, okay? I’ll tell them, Lloyd, I’m so sorry.”

With a stiff nod, Lloyd disappeared behind the door. It clicked softly shut in her face, and Nya stood there, steeling herself from the wave of anguish trying to wash over her, before she turned and walked away.

First things first. She needed to take another shower.

——————

Lloyd’s illness reinvigorated the cloud of dread hanging over the monastery. Thankfully, Lloyd hadn’t been in super close contact with either Nya or Cole, the only humans left uninfected.

Jay, sitting on the edge of his bed, rubbed tiredly at an eye. His other hand held sketches for an invention concept he’d once excitedly rambled about for two hours straight, but his heart wasn’t really in puzzling it out at the moment.

One little call, not even five minutes long, earlier in the afternoon. Lloyd had squirmed and tried to brush off the apprehensive questions he was getting barraged with on all sides, Jay included. One the one hand, it was an explosive burst of frantic attention; he really didn’t blame Lloyd for looking so frazzled by it. On the other …

Lloyd had tested negative, and _he’d gotten sick anyway._

Then there was Jay, who’d been sitting in his room for days, feeling perfectly healthy yet completely useless to help lest he infect someone else. Days he’d spent tinkering with parts until his fingers hurt, playing every game he could run on full volume, trying to drown out the horrid coughing, the hushed whispers from the others, his own mounting anxiety.

The thought was selfish, really, considering what Kai and Lloyd were going through, but it plagued him. (Pun entirely intentional, thank you.)

Why wasn’t he sick?

He had the physical virus in his body, he knew. He was contagious. But he didn’t feel sick. Kai was coughing hard enough to spit up every innard in his body, and so feverish Zane had made several calls to a doctor. Lloyd was just showing symptoms, and he was already sore. But Jay?

He’d been positive for days, and he wasn’t feeling a thing.

That was good! He should have been relieved he’d gotten off scot-free!

And for the first while, he had been. Stir-craziness aside, he’d been fine to sit and mess around with whatever was at his disposal, like his biggest worry was being confined to a bedroom.

It turned out the entire problem was that Jay was not, in fact, just taking the world’s most restricted vacation.

They were ill, and there was a whole cacophony to force him to confront it whenever he let his guard down. Kai’s violent staccato coughing, the anxious humdrum of caretaking, the constant stink of chemicals that belonged more in a hospital. The nervous phone calls to Wu and Misako made daily before dinner, the heaviness of the other ninja’s steps when they walked by his room. It was one reminder after another, which he supposed was why his fear for his friends had spiraled into proper, crushing dread.

What if he didn’t stay healthy? Two other people in the monastery already had it bad enough to show symptoms. Kai, especially, scared him past the point of denial; the fire ninja was tough to the point where it was obnoxious, but he always sounded pained and exhausted nowadays, words hard to associate with his normal, eternally-burning energy. If robust, wary Kai could get it so bad … What chance did he stand?

What happened when the other shoe dropped?

Belatedly, Jay realized the tightness in his throat wasn’t related to sickness. A sob caught in his throat, and he pulled his knees up to his chest and buried his head in his arms.

He hated this. When the whole mess had started, he’d just been annoyed at the inconvenience, but now he really hated it, with every cell in his body. He just wanted his friends to be okay, because they didn’t deserve this at all. He wanted to know he wouldn’t follow them.

Jay just wanted everything to be over.

——————

Near Jay’s door, Cole froze with trash bags in hand at the unmistakable sound of sniffling.

Oh. Oh, no.

He stood there for a second, weighing his options, before chastising himself for even having to think about it. Taking out the trash could wait.

Setting the bag down, Cole inhaled. Exhaled. Lifted his knuckles up to knock once, a quiet question.

“Go ‘way.” Another sniffle tore at his heart. If he knew Jay, he was a bit defensive about getting caught vulnerable.

“Sorry. I just … you okay, Jay?”

“What’s it to you?” Jay snapped wetly.

Ouch.

“That’s pretty frosty, for someone who’s not an ice elemental,” Cole said, a twinge of hurt going through his chest. “Look, man, I just wanted to talk. ‘S fine if you don’t wanna.”

Right before he was about to turn and leave, he caught a quiet “Wait.”

He waited.

“I’m sorry. I just hate this.” Jay’s voice wavered.

“I know.” Cole sat down in front of the door, and resisted the urge to lean his head against it. “Tell me about it.”

So Jay did. The master of earth sat and listened as his best friend sobbed and spluttered his way through the numbing terror of harboring something invisible while it ripped through their friends’ bodies, and hurt for him. His eyes might have even pricked a little, but Jay didn’t have to know that.

“An’ I know it’s stupid,” Jay was hiccupping, “to be upset about something like that when it’s been days. They’re the ones that’re really sick, and I’m scared that’ll be me, but I’m glad it isn’t, how awful is that? I bet just for that, I’m gonna get sicker than Kai right when I least expect it, then I’m really hooped.”

“Jay, that’s not a stupid thing to be scared of,” Cole insisted. “Things are all-around pretty horrible right now. And if I’m being honest … I’m scared, too.”

“Of catching it?” Jay rasped. The sniffles were getting less intense. Good, he was calming down. Which was good, because Cole wasn’t sure he could handle what he was about to share otherwise.

“That, too. I was a bit nervous about the possibility,” Cole admitted. “Weird, but … same thing as you. I figure if I was gonna get it, I would’ve by now. Only other person with an immune system I’m around is Nya, so … not much chance, right?”

An affirmative hum, urging him to get on with what he wanted to say already.

“I’m more scared watching you guys fight it. You and Lloyd aren’t really anything to worry about, but … well, when I was young, my mom was really sick.”

It was all he could offer before his throat closed up.

A gasp echoed from the other side of the door.

He’d come to peace with her memory by learning who she’d been, but it was still so painful to remember visiting her in the hospital, watching her decay into a shell of the strong, lively warrior she’d been in life. The nights spent awake catastrophizing, the sounds of illness hammering through his ears, his family inexorably declining while the ones still well cracked at the seams from stress—it was the same demented dance, and he hadn’t ever gotten over having to do it the first time.

“Oh. Oh man, Cole. I’m sorry.”

Cole chuckled weakly. “Don’t worry, I sorted through some of that learning about her in Shintaro. But watching you guys catch it, knowing it’s here… you can guess why that’s scary.”

“Yeah,” Jay sighed. “I get it.”

They were quiet a moment longer before Jay asked how Kai was doing. From there, the conversation meandered onto different topics, but the uneasiness bubbling under their skins never really left.

That was the thing about sickness. It had become the persistent undercurrent of their lives now.


End file.
